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The Truman Area Community Network
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This map was scanned from a copy made from the 1895 Plat Book of Henry County, using a hand scanner. (Which accounts for the somewhat crooked nature of some of the lines!) The street names of the east - west streets (Elm, Oak, Lincoln, Green, and Franklin, from north to south) have been added, as these were on a part of the map not scanned.
The Blair Line depot, opened in April of 1899, is shown on the north side of Green Street, between Second and Main, marked "Depot", with one Blair Line track on either side of the depot. Later a third track was added, west of the other two, which also ran alongside the loading docks for the Clearfield plant in the block north of Lincoln Street. The MK&T main line ran just east of the Blair Line tracks. The Frisco took over the Blair Line in 1899. In 1924 the Frisco acquired the "Leaky Roof" and the area between the Blair Line track and the MK&T was graveled and used as a platform by trains from the former "Leaky Roof" line, which used the MK&T tracks to go from the connection at Allen Street to the former Blair Line tracks in North Clinton.
After the Frisco abandoned its line through Clinton in 1978 the MKT acquired the old depot and what remained of the Frisco tracks, and moved its Clinton agency into the depot. In 1988 the agency was closed, but the depot continued to be used by track and signal maintainers of the Katy and its successor the Union Pacific until early 1993. The railroad sold the depot site to the Henry County Library in late 1992 and the depot was demolished in the spring of 1993 to make way for the Library's parking lot. The new library building (opened in April, 1994) is located east of the depot site, on the lot marked "50".
The Middlecof flour mill is shown west of the Blair line tracks just south of Oak Street. This was the later site of the Armour Poultry plant, which in turn in 1948 became the Clearfield Cheese Company plant. The cold storage plant shown south of the Middlecof mill grew considerably and then in the 1950s was acquired by Clearfield and incorporated into the Clearfield plant. The plant eventually expanded all the way south to Lincoln Street. It now belongs to Schreiber Foods, Inc. The plant parking lot covers most of the area marked "4th Add." on the plat and also has taken over some lots on Main Street south of Oak. All the remnants of the former Frisco trackage have been removed.
The Lemp Brewery Warehouse was located on the north side of Franklin Street just east of the MK&T crossing, in the lot marked "13". Lemp was the second largest brewery in St. Louis, but unlike, its larger rival Anheuser-Busch, Lemp failed to survive Prohibition. The warehouse, built in 1889, had a side track and loading doors of the west side of the building. An oak tree by the sidewalk provided a natural "bumping post" that often keep cars from rolling off the end of the side track and into Franklin Street. The advent of Prohibition caused Lemp to close its warehouse and the side track was removed, and the loading doors bricked over. A drainage ditch was dug along the east side of the Katy track in this area, leaving no visible trace anymore of the side track.
The building was used by a car dealership and a farm implement dealer and an addition was added on the north side of the building, extending west over part of the land once occupied by the side track. When the Henry County Library moved into the building around 1950 another addition was added on the west side of the building at the south (Franklin) street end, covering more of the area where the side track had once been located. This front part of this addition was used to house the bookmobile and later became the Reference room, and the back part was the library's office and part of the stacks. The library moved to its new home at the corner of 2nd & Green in April, 1994. The building occupied for several years by a store, then stood vacant. In December of 2002 the building was demolished.
The Woods Hotel, later the Cozart Hotel, was on the north side of Franklin just west of the MK&T tracks, and is marked "Hotel". It came down in the late 1970's or early 1980s, replaced by the Farm & Home Savings building, now occupied by US Bank.
The horse car line of the Clinton Street Railway Company is shown on Franklin Street, stopping just shy of the MK&T tracks. There is some evidence that the line originally crossed the Katy to run east either to the Burrell Hotel (at the southeast corner of Franklin and 2nd) or to the Old Franklin School at the northwest corner of 3rd & Franklin. (Old Franklin School was torn down and replaced in 1911 by the High School, which in its turn was taken down in the 1960's or so, and is now a parking lot.)